


A Feast of Scraps

by thinlizzy2



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/pseuds/thinlizzy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Hell, Wesley and Lilah cling to what little they have left.  And to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Feast of Scraps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DelwynCole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelwynCole/gifts).



> Thank you to the Mod and to DelwynCole for the chance to revisit these beloved characters by writing this. I really hope you enjoy it!

Sometimes, Wesley runs away. 

There’s no point and nowhere to go and he knows that. Nonetheless, sometimes the urge to _get-away-get-free-get-anywhere-but-here_ is just too fucking much for him and so he runs. Hands without bodies reach out, tearing at his clothes, closing around whatever extremities they can find. He loses his footing, slipping on something thick and viscous; whenever any of it gets into his mouth it’s salty with a tang of iron. He spits it out, climbs back onto his feet and keeps going. His lungs clench and his heart pounds in his chest; never mind that neither lungs nor heart are needed anymore. The ground is scorching hot and the skin on his feet burns, but still he keeps running.

Not that it matters. Eventually he’ll have to stop and sleep. And then he’ll wake up next to Lilah again.

_That’s not the worst part._

He has occasional visions of the others. He’s not a ghost; he can’t haunt them and watch them. What he sees are flashes, drilling their way under his tightly clenched eyelids and searing into his brain. 

He witnesses his father getting the news of his death, hanging up the telephone and pausing for just a moment before returning to his work. He glimpses Angel and Gunn and Illyria fighting desperately against insurmountable odds, the waves of enemies coming fast and thick. He sees Lorne broken, losing himself in alcohol, failure and memories. He sees, and cannot stop seeing, Fred, forever trapped in that last _why can’t I stay_ moment. He knows now, beyond any doubt, that her being allowed to go would have been far kinder. 

Sometimes, when it ends, Lilah is beside him, shaking him furiously or slapping his face in a desperate effort to bring him back. Other times she is caught in her own tortuous nightmares and he has to try futilely to call her out of them himself.

_That’s not the worst part either._

Every once in a while, Lilah has to leave. 

She never knows where she will go when she is summoned, and neither does Wesley. 

Some days she is merely tired when she returns; Hell, like any bureaucracy, requires drones to do paperwork. Other times her eyes are fucking _haunted_ , her body wracked with tremors and her skin cold and clammy. Wesley can do very little to help; there are no fleecy blankets or hot milky cups of tea where they are. All he can do is gather her up in his arms and carry her over to their sleeping area, wrap his body around hers and try to keep her warm and still. 

The most horrible nights, however, are those that follow the rare days when she’s needed on Earth. When she comes back reeking of _there_ \- a whiff of sea air or gasoline fumes in her hair, the trace of living people’s exhalations on her skin - he can’t stand to be close to her. She knows it too; she can smell envy and longing on him as easily as he can asphalt and hairspray on her. He knows it isn’t her fault; when they call her she has to go. Still, the sense of betrayal freezes him like nothing he ever felt when he was alive. It lingers unseen in their rooms for icy stretches of time that might be minutes or might be years.

_That, however, is not the worst part._

And he could leave her too! Or he could have done. Once. 

The senior partners gave him that option after he first arrived, after only one night with Lilah. One night of the silky skin of her thighs and the chestnut swirl of her hair and the sharp points of her fingernails as they raked his back. One night of her and then the offer came. 

He said no.

Wesley doesn’t know if they meant to return him to Earth or to send him to Heaven. He doesn’t know if the offer is still valid either; they never repeated it and he hopes they never do. Still, it would be a simple enough matter to contact them and ask. He wants to - every single day he wants to - and he knows he never will.

He also has no idea if they offered a similar deal to Lilah. He could ask, but she’d want to know why and then he’d have to tell her what he gave up. Whether she would be grateful or confused or derisive, he cannot say. It’s not a mystery he’s particularly eager to solve. 

So his sacrifice lies there like a physical thing, as sharp as a sword between them in their bed. When things are particularly bad the temptation to wield it is almost overwhelming. Even though - or possibly because - he suspects it will slice what they have into sides of dead meat.

_Still, that’s not the worst part._

Wesley loves Lilah. Or he thinks he loves her; he must, since he chose to stay here with her. Orpheus descended into Hades to retrieve Eurydice but he never offered to remain there. So his love - Wesley’s love for Lilah, no matter how unlikely that still seems - must be a thing beyond even epics or legends.

Even though he doesn’t know whether or not that emotion is returned.

Their conversations are about survival: how to avoid what seems like a particularly bloody conflict brewing and, if they cannot, which of Hell’s ever-changing factions they should align themselves with. Or else they trade verbal filth; their nights are often filled with taunts over exactly which of them is a slut or a whore for the other. For all the creative smut that comes tumbling out of her mouth, Lilah is just as unlikely to make a declaration of love for Wesley as he is to do the same thing for her.

Because he hasn’t told her. For however long they’ve been here, and he is beginning to suspect that it might have been decades already, he has never once offered her a single endearment. The closest he has come is telling her that he loves her tits, her mouth, the tight grip of her pussy spasming around his cock. They are allied against Hell but they have never stopped being at war with each other, not for an instant. To tell her that he loves her would be akin to surrendering, and he’s just too fucking proud to even let himself consider it.

So he will just feel whatever it is he feels - this tender aching hunger - forever, with no chance of satisfaction. That’s to be expected, of course. 

It _is_ Hell, after all.

_Unbelievably, even that isn’t the worst part._

The worst part comes during the rare quiet moments, after they have fought whatever public battles for survival that a particular day has required and after their far more vital private battle has come to a sweaty draw. Lilah tends to plunge into sleep long before Wesley can drift off; she’s an escape artist by nature and will find sanctuary in unconsciousness whenever possible. Wesley lies there, surrounded by her scent and her arms and her still so human warmth and he stares into her sleeping face. 

And he fucking _cherishes_ her.

The joy he feels in those moments terrifies him. Joy is dangerous; it would be impossible to work and live beside Angel night after night and not learn that. His happiness feels like a wound that might go septic at any moment. It could very well be the thing that destroys him.

He is damned. He is one of The Damned. Why would he be given an opportunity for pleasure, a moment of peace, a chance at eternity with this woman, for any reason other than the torment that will come when it’s snatched away? The very thought makes him clutch at her fiercely; sometimes he holds her so tightly that he wakes her up and they argue about it. He hates them both in those moments, for wasting happiness that is almost certain to be in short supply.

It seems unbelievable but he still has something to lose, something that can be taken away from him. The millions of little tenuous threads linking him to Lilah can be severed. She can reject him or he can abandon her or they can be separated against both their wills. In the depths of Hell, he has found something that, given the chance, he would choose to keep forever.

_And the thought of not being able to is the very worst thing he’s ever encountered in Hell or on Earth._


End file.
